


Push past every barrier

by owlaholic68



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fainting, Injury, Old World Blues, a translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-19 23:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: The only certain things in life: death, taxes, and the Mojave.





	Push past every barrier

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Il faut dépasser toutes les limites](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11881275) by [owlaholic68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68). 



When all is said and done, the desert always remains.

If you look at the Mojave from a great height, sometimes you only see the lights of the Strip, the beacons and hopes of humanity. But if all that is extinguished, nothing remains.

Except the desert. The only certain things in life: death, taxes, and the Mojave. Even when Lynn can’t see it, it’s still there. She’s sure of it. But for three days, she can’t see anything of the world outside of this damned crater.

_Has it really been three days?_ Lynn thinks. She frowns, peeking around a hexagonal column. _It seems longer than three days. Whatever._ She glances at the Pip-Boy map: a little ways to the west, a small arrow marks the location of her objective.

In front of her on a cliff, hidden by imposing columns, an enormous dish is lit up in glowing blue letters: X-13. Over there, in the complex at the base of the cliff, a key piece of her quest lies. But right now, that’s not what interests her.

Lynn walks towards her goal, crouched on trembling legs (always shaking like that now, she really needs to get more sleep. Or even just sleeping at all, wouldn’t that be great). The cold wind traces across the top of her (false) spine, on the exposed part of her neck. Lynn shivers. She looks around, keeping her ears open for every unusual sound, every indication of a hostile presence.

Footsteps on metal: that’s just her own feet. The wind whistling between endless pillars and pipes. The soft _click click click_ of robo-scorpions: a concern for later. _If Mobius isn’t talking to me, I’m not in imminent danger. That scientist is crazy enough that he can’t miss an opportunity to brag of his ‘victory’._ She’s so preoccupied worrying about that danger, she misses another one.

A rattle. Lynn stops moving, but it’s already too late. She jumps back, drawing her protonic axe, trying to swing it towards a Nightstalker. But the monster is too fast for her. It jumps up and tries to bite her arm, barking nonstop. She gives it a good kick in the head and hits it with her glowing axe. It whines and retreats a few feet.

Then Lynn shrieks and nearly drops her weapon. A second Nightstalker is attached to her left leg, its fangs excruciatingly embedded in her flesh. She screams again and hits the other Nightstalker, who shakes its head back and forth. A small red light illuminates on her Pip-Boy: the signal of a serious wound. She swings again and again. Finally, the two Nightstalkers are dead, laying on the rocky dirt.

She stabs a Stimpack in her leg, tears welling up in her eyes. Lynn groans. _Go fuck yourself, Borous. ‘Oh, but I’m sure that it’s a great idea to experiment with the DNA of extremely dangerous creatures! Yes, and I’m going to leave the proverbial cage open too!’_

 “Go, my mighty robo-scorpions!” As if this day couldn’t get any worse, a small horde of robots approach, aiming at her with their lasers. Mobius’ voice booms from a loudspeaker somewhere.

 “Crawl in search of intelligence. And then…” Lynn kills some of them, but more quickly arrive. Too many enemies, too many for her.

“Sting that intelligence in the name of Moibus, yes…” Lynn screams again, her right arm badly burned by a laser. Her axe protonic falls. A robo-scorpion jumps towards her, and she tries to calm herself down, to breathe more slowly (or breathe at all, wouldn’t that be great). Lynn punches the metallic monster with her bare hands and something breaks, both in the machine as well as her hand. She grimaces and punches again. Lasers burn at her back, but she no longer pays attention. The robo-scorpion starts to smoke. She tries to scramble back to avoid the inevitable explosion, but the others enemies block her way. She throws an arm over her face and covers her eyes.

“Yes,” Mobius finishes, “sting it.”

She gasps, already plunging a Stimpack into her torso with bloody fingers. Several red lights flash on her Pip-Boy, and the Stimpack didn’t seem to have any effect on her internal wounds.

Two hostile robo-scorpions remain before her. Lynn limps backwards, realizing she has no weapon. But what can she do? Trying to fight with her bare hands is out of the question. And she can’t really run with her injuries. The robots advance. Lynn retreats, her lungs burning. She flees step by step, avoiding those blasted lasers and claws. -

In the corner of her eye, she sees something. She turns. It’s an orange antenna, and then another, and then a long line of bulbous antennae. The perimeter.

She sees the desert.

For the first time, she loves it. The Mojave no longer symbolizes a wasteland. Before, the desert was always too hot, too empty, too scary. But after three days without even a glance, she loves it. And she wants to be there, to the point that that desire physically hurts.

_It still exists?_ Without realizing it, she approaches the limit. _I’d already forgotten it._ Lynn takes a step forward, then another. Her head starts to hurt. Everything blurs. _It’s beautiful. Magnificent. Astounding._ She rapidly blinks. _Why have I never noticed?_ Her ears are ringing, and she can no longer the robo-scorpions.

_“Don’t try to go past the the perimeter of the crater,”_ The Think Tank had warned. _“You will be directly transported back to the Sink.”_

Normally, an inconvenience. But now, a blessing.

Lynn forces herself to keep going, one foot in front of the other, towards the enticing image blurring before her. She loses her balance and falls to her knees, heavy eyelids slipping shut. The last thing she sees before passing out is the orange sunrise over the unending horizon.

She wakes up on the balcony of the Sink, cold metal under the cheek, a blue force field in front of her. She struggles to her feet. One hand leans on the railing to stay upright, the other reaches out and touches the force field.

_Freedom_ , she thinks, ignoring the medical alarms of her Pip-Boy, _I’ll get back there one day, I promise._ She enters the Sink and limps into the Auto-Doc.

And the desert remains. Outside of that Auto-Doc, that dome, that crater, it remains.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in French! So if this sounds a little different than my usual style, that's because my 'French' writing voice doesn't sound exactly like my 'English' voice.


End file.
